Michaela DePrince: 'Body image is a matter of opinion'

War orphan Michaela DePrince opens up about body image and battling racism in ballet

When I was four, I found a discarded copy of a magazine at my orphanage in Sierra Leone. I wanted to be the woman on the front cover in the pink tutu and pointe shoes. I had no idea who she was. I didn’t even know she was a ballerina; all I knew was that I wanted – needed – to become that person. I tore off the page and hid it in my underwear.

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I suffer from the skin condition vitiligo – I have white spots on my face – and that's what's always made me stand out from all the other children.

My uncle sent me to an orphanage as a three-year-old, after my father was killed by rebels during the conflicts in Sierra Leone, and my mother, who'd tried to look after me for a while, starved to death. I was told nobody would want to adopt me because of the way I looked – people called me ‘Devil’s child’. I was shy and hated looking at myself in the mirror, but feeling weak was not an option, however much they knocked my self-esteem. I put on a brave face and pretended that I didn’t care what people thought when they told me I'd never find a family. That was the only way I could survive.

I desperately wanted to prove them wrong – and then I did, when my American mother adopted me aged four and took me back to New Jersey.

I remember meeting her for the first time; she had these vivid red shoes, bright blonde hair and fair, rosy cheeks. She had vitiligo, too (though hers is hard to notice because she is white) and refused to believe that other people couldn’t – or wouldn’t – accept me for it. Finally, I was lucky enough to be surrounded by wonderful, caring people, and I had the chance to pursue my dream of becoming the woman in the tutu I'd seen on that magazine.

Jade Young

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The following year, my parents took me to the Academy of Music in Philadelphia to see The Nutcracker and I thought, wow; this is exactly what I was born to do. From that moment, I was obsessed. Well, probably before then, as I even noticed that one of the dancers messed up her steps – because I had memorised them from the video I had at home (I think that was when my adopted mum also realised I really wanted to become a ballerina).

I longed to be up there on that stage, to move other people as much as those dancers had moved me. Initially, it didn’t even register that none of the dancers looked like me because I wasn’t thinking about their appearance – I just wanted to be one of them.

My parents enrolled me at ballet school in Philadelphia and drove me an hour and back to class, six times a week. I loved it, it felt like I belonged.

It wasn't until I was eight that I first noticed the racial bias in ballet when I overheard one of the directors saying, ‘we don’t put a lot of effort into the black girls, because they’ll always have big boobs and will be end up being bigger'. His comment made me feel hurt and furious.

I didn't confront the director – that would have accomplished nothing. Instead, I cried in the car all the way home, but became determined to prove him wrong. That was something I did again when I had a role taken away from me because they didn’t think audiences were ready for a black Marie in The Nutcracker. I was always crying in the car (I saved my tears for my mother) but my parents loved me so much that I found solace in their affection.

Jade Young

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Other people may notice how I look, but I don't. This is just who I am.

The only time I realise I'm different is when l look at a photograph and see I’m the only one who is black in the company. Now that I'm a ballerina in the Dutch National Ballet, my body is my life, which means I'm scrutinising myself 24/7.

At first I found it hard when other ballet mums would comment on the fact that I am muscular and African – one mother even called me a 'brute' – and that's how I noticed that my physique was different to the white girls in my class.

Obviously their comments made me more self-concious of my body, but, luckily, my confidence grew thanks to my dance teachers in Montreal. They convinced me I had a perfect body for ballet, that body image is a matter of opinion and that most professional ballerinas, no matter what their race, were toned and muscular.

We all have our·idiosyncrasies, but pretty much every dancer is going to have a strong, wiry body. So, yes, there are moments when I look at my figure and wish I was thinner, just like the girl next to me; but I am never going to be super skinny because not everybody is built the same. I’m always going to have a butt and bigger thighs and I’ve accepted my body for what it is.

My main goal? To be healthy, especially since we dance from 10am to 6pm, which can be mentally and physically exhausting. There are dancers who put themselves on strict diets, but I’m not one of them. If you go down that path it can make you constantly unhappy with your body, which is why I try to be normal (I did go through a phase last year where I tried a gluten-free diet, but it didn’t work for me because I love pasta so much!).

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Even today, there are almost no black dancers in most ballet companies and it makes me so sad that young girls in my position have nobody to look up to. It shouldn’t be that way, which is why I decided to share my story, because while I have so many horrible memories of my childhood, I want people to see how far I've come.

Dancing has changed my life. It gave me hope and helped me to deal with my anger about all the things that have happened to me.

I want to change the way people look at black ballerinas and how they think about adoption. I want to become a role model for girls like me.

When I saw that ballerina on a magazine cover all those years ago, it inspired me to be something, even if everyone around me told me I couldn’t. I hope one day I can inspire a young girl in the same way, and perhaps make a tiny ripple in the world.

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